Tag Archives: humor

Was trading stories from our youth with a buddy of mine the other day, and this one made us both chuckle.

My first job out of college was managing a car rental agency. The hours were long, but money was decent, plus I had my pick of any car in the fleet for my personal use.

However, it was a high-stress and highly frenetic job. We had the largest fleet in the district, and days could get pretty crazy. As a result, I was usually a bit desperate to make sure everything got done, but would occasionally forget who was supposed to have done what.

So on a typical day as I ran back into the building, I saw my assistant (and to this day, one of my dearest friends) Robert, going over a rental agreement with an elderly couple.

When I wrote this post, almost a year and a half ago, our granddaughter was two. But I find it still rings true, although the exact details have changed. I could write a new post to reflect the perils of trying to write something substantive while parenting a three-and-a-half year old…(substitute “Go, Diego, Go” for “Kipper the Dog” and chocolate protein bars for goldfish)…but I’ve been soothing nightmare fears since 4:30 AM, and now it’s nearly 6:00 and I haven’t made my coffee yet (see steps 1 and 2, below).

So while I continue to ponder self-discipline, and the parallels between our relationships with our children and with Our Father, I think I’ll just let you read this.

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FIRST PUBLISHED ON APRIL 17, 2013:

Step 1: Set your clock for a bit earlier than usual, so that you can write your first draft before the two-year-old wakes up. Then hit snooze until the German Shepherd sticks his cold nose in your face and wills you to let-him-out-for-pete’s-sake-what’s-wrong-with-you.

Step 2: Brew a large cup of coffee and decide to check your email while the coffee is brewing. 30 minutes later …when you’ve answered three emails, deleted 12 others, caught up on Facebook (including taking your turn in Words with Friends) and checked the weather… your coffee is cold, and the toddler is stirring.

In my humble opinion, this is still one of the all-time best comedy bits, ever.

Growing up, we kept our LPs*** stored in a new (at the time) GE Stereophonic Console in the living room, and as a kid I went through them all: Henry Mancini, Sing Along with Mitch Miller!, dozens of sundry Christmas albums, Bill Cosby, ….and Bob Newhart.

Below is probably the very first comedy routine I ever heard, and the parent album won a Grammy Award back in 1961. Yet it’s a testament to its simple brilliance that it still works perfectly 50+ years later.

And this has been the trend, unfortunately. Heck, the first two games of the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals (both nationally broadcast on NBC, by the way) got soundly thrashed by RERUNS of the following programs: ‘Dogs In The City’, ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’, ‘Secret Millionaire’, ‘America’s Got Talent’, ‘Grimm’, ‘2 Broke Girls’, …and a rerun of the rerunof ‘America’s Got Talent’.

Yikes.

That’s the difference between getting beat …and getting a beat-down.

And yet, both the league and the sport are positioned for success, perhaps now more than ever before.

Early in Barack Obama’s presidency, I remember seeing a creepy picture someone had photo-shopped to make him look like the Joker from The Dark Knight, portending sinister things to come. Fast-forward five years. I’m afraid they were giving the president way too much credit.

Rather than appearing as some conniving genius mad for power, Obama looks like a fool frantically trying to keep his whole façade of power from crumbling.

Between Barack and a Hard Place

Our POTUS still doesn’t seem to grasp how image shapes perception, especially in the media. For example, he recently appeared on Zach Galifianakis’ Web comedy show, “Between Two Ferns.” Galifianakis’ purpose in this show is to get laughs by asking extremely awkward questions and putting his guests in the worst light possible. That’s the joke: everyone gets to look either rude or foolish.

This is a VERY old ‘fun’ post, from waaaay back when we only had about a dozen followers. And since I’ll be with my youngest son at an archery tournament all day, this is as good a day as any to re-post it.

Have a great weekend, folks!

–JTR

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We’ve been hitting politics all week, and I’m calling “time-out” for the day. There’ll be time for politics tomorrow.

Instead, we thought you’d enjoy some of these graphs that we found on the site GraphJam.com (…which now appears to have been absorbed into another website?). Regardless, we thought these were pretty funny, and possess more than just a “little” truth.